Pity

I was very excited about this movie and I actually thought that it would focus more on the reason Wen Ning and Lan Shizui separated from Wei Wuxian at the end of The Untamed. It would've been amazing to see them battling idk, Wen Ruohan's spirit or something once they went to Nightless City and found out something about their legacy. Instead, we've got a Wallmart-quality movie that was obviously meant to promote Yubin and maybe some of the other actors.

Don't get me wrong, I don't have anything against the actors or a Wen Ning-centric movie. I would've been glad to see Wen Ning become the protagonist of his own (un)life for once, just... not like this. It isn't worth much if it doesn't feel like Wen Ning at all. The Untamed followed the novel's timeline as close as possible, so we know that it couldn't have been too far from the end of the series. I agree that Wen Ning would've matured a bit now that he's not Wei Wuxian's attack dog (and isn't that ironic) anymore, but there's no way he would've ended up being a less sarcastic knock-off version of his old master and lose the stutter he's had all of his life just like that. I feel like whoever wrote the script only watched that one Core Reveal episode and actually thought Wen Ning was just naturally like that, and not that he had been pushed way beyond his limit in order to have the fucking guts to raise his voice at anyone, let alone Jiang Wanyin. The OOC was horrible and I do not appreciate how they masaacred his perfectly good character. Wen Ning screaming at some random dude that he talks too much and that he should die already? Turning him into a living corpse (by the way, when the fuck did Wen Ning get all of those new shiny powers? Ridiculous!) and chaining him up to rot in some shady basement? In what universe would he even think about something like that?! And Sizhui, perfect little Lan disciple who was raised by Lan Wangji out of all people, letting him do that? No way.

Thankfully, Sizhui didn't get much screentime or lines, so at least he wasn't tragically butchered by the scriptwriters and was more of a cute mascot in the background than an actual secondary character.

As for the acting... It was bad. Maybe kinda decent in some parts, but generally bad. Especially the parts where Wen Ning was "talking to himself" or whatever. I'm sorry, but Yubin clearly cannot play evil characters. His "evil laugh" was the worst and I cringed horribly everytime.

That Wei Wuxian cameo could've been great if they actually took the time to find an actor with a similar build to Xiao Zhan, but it was very obvious that it wasn't our loved trash boi the Yiling Patriarch, so I couldn't even be happy for seeing him on screen again.

The CGI during the fights was mostly okay, though there are some scenes in which you can actually see the green screen and that's really not acceptable in any form of movie, so no favors there. I did enjoy seeing Wen Ning using the chains, I'll admit that much. For being the one thing they took from canon, at least they picked it right.

The music... well. It was... there. I finished watching the movie just before writing this review and I've already forgotten it, so nothing impactful.

As for the plot. I would've probably been fine with it if it wasn't so damn predictable and full of holes. I knew what was up as soon as the first flashback ended. It's sad that the most interesting part of the plot were actually the first five minutes, before any of the main characters even apeared. A good example is how they just let that poor woman burn instead of saving her. You were both supposed to be madly in love with her, but after she's pushed into a fire none of you actually try to jump in and take her out? It's like "well, I guess she's campfire now, nothing we can do". Not even the guy who had a fucking piece of the Yin Iron in his hand could use some resentful energy to put the fire off or whatever, and she just stood there in the middle of the fire and waited for the flames to consume her, remembering from time to time that she's burning up and she should probably scream a little.

Also, about that. There were five pieces of Yin Iron: three were in Wen Ruohan's clutches (destroyed by the remaining clans), one was with our favorite sociopath (burried with dage), and the center piece was used by Wei Wuxian to create the Tiger Seal (destroyed when he died). Knowing those facts, can anyone explain to me where the fuck did this one sixth piece come from?! Because if Jin Guangshan couldn't snatch a piece for himself from the three that were destroyed and had to fucking hire Xue Yang's services just in case he would use it like he wanted, this Rando servant guy definetly wouldn't have had the power or resources to even get close to looking at them.

Rewatch value is "are you kidding?" No way I'll rewatch this crap.

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